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A Message 

To the Makers of Public Sentiment 

in Connecticut 




WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR 

Speeches of 

THE PRESIDENT ON FLAG DAY 

of 

ELIHU ROOT TO RUSSIA 

and 

MESSAGE TO THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE 

from the 

AMERICAN RIGHTS LEAGUE 



Issued by 

THE CONNECTICUT STATE COUNCIL OF DEFENSE 

Hartford, Conn. 



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To the Recipient of this Bulletin: 

These three addresses are sent to you, because your 
position in your community is such that you are a Maker of 
Public Sentiment. 

These addresses contain the key to the present critical 
posture of affairs. They are the official voice of the 
nation's leaders. 

Will you not accept the responsibility of giving currency 
to these views by every means in your power? 



CONNECTICUT STATE COUNCIL OF DEFENSE, 



MARCUS H. HOLCOMB, 
Governor, 

WILLIAM M._ MALTBIE, 
Executive Secretary, 



RICHARD M. BISSELL, 

Chairman, 
JOSEPH W. ALSOP, 
WINCHESTER BENNETT, 
D. CHESTER BROWN, 
GEORGE M. COLE, 
HOMER S. CUMMINGS, 
HOWARD A. GIDDINGS, 
CHARLES A. GOODWIN, 
RICHARD H. M. ROBINSON, 
JULIUS STREMLAU, 
HARRIS WHITTEMORE, 

THOMAS HEWES, Secretary, 
JOHN T. ROBERTS, Treasurer. 



"THE INTRIGUE FOR PEACE" 

Address by President Woodrow Wilson at Wash- 
ington on Flag Day, June 14, 1917. 

My Fellow Citizens: — We meet to celebrate Flag Day because 
this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem 
of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It 
has no other character than that which we give it from generation 
to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in rriajestic silence 
above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or 
in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us, — speaks to us of 
the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the 
records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and 
from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has 
floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of 
life worked out by great people. We are about to carry it into 
battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We 
are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be 
millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the capable men of 
the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far 
away, — for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For some- 
thing for which it has never sought the fire before? American 
armies were never before sent across the seas. Why are they 
sent now? For some new purpose, for which this great flag has 
never been carried before or for some old, familiar, heroic pur- 
pose for which it has seen men, its own men die upon every battle- 
field upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution? 

These are questions which must be answered. We are 
Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her 
with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always 
used it. • We are accountable at the bar of history and must plead 
in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve. 

America Forced into War. 

It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The 
extraordinary insults and aggressions of the imperial German 
government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms 
in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as 
a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany 
denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting 
communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to 
corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When 
they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently 
spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens 
from their allegiance — and some of these agents were men con- 
nected with, the official embassy of the German government itself 
here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our 



6 

industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico 
to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile 
alliance with her, — and that, not by indirection, but by direct 
suggestion from the foreign office in Berlin. They impudently 
denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their 
threats that they would send to their death any of our people who 
ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own 
people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their own neigh- 
bors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and 
surprise whether there was any community in which hostile 
intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circumstances 
would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired peace, it 
was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under which 
we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand. 

Fighting Germans for Their Good. 

But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly 
as we knew before we were ourselves engaged that we are not 
the enemies of the German people and that they are not our 
enemies. They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish 
that we should be drawn into it; and we are vaguely conscious 
that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it, as 
well as our own. They are themselves in the grip of the same 
sinister power that has now at last stretched its ugly talons out 
and drawn blood from us. The whole world is at war because the 
whole world is in the grip of that power and is trying out the 
great battle which shall determine whether it is to be brought 
under its mastery or fling itself free. 

The war was begun by the military masters of Germany, who 
proved to be also the masters of Anstria-Hungar}^ These men 
have never regarded nations as peoples, men, women, and children 
of like blood and frame as themselves, for whom governments 
existed and in whom governments had their life. They have 
regarded them merely as serviceable organizations which they 
could by force or intrigue bend or corrupt to their own purpose. 
They have regarded the smaller states, in particular, and the 
peoples who could be overwhelmed by force, as their natural tools 
and instruments of domination. 

Purpose Long Avowed. 

Their purpose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other 
nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little atten- 
tion; regarded what German professors expounded in their class- 
rooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of 
German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from prac- 
tical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destin\", 
than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of 
Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what 
well advanced intrigues lay back of what the professors and the 
writers were saying, and were glad to go forward unmolested, 
filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, putting 
German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and 
make interest with her government, developing plans of sedition 
and rel)elli(ni in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. 
The demands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere single 
step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to 
Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, 
but tho\- meant to press them whether they did or not, for they 
thought themselves ready for the final issue of arms. 



n 



Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military 
power and political control across the very center of Europe, and 
beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia; and Austria- 
Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Servia or 
Bulgaria or Turkey or the ponderous states of the East. Austria- 
Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the Central German 
Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same forces and in- 
fluences that has originally cemented the German states them- 
selves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a 
heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race 
entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It 
contemplated binding together racial and political units which 
could be kept together only by force, — Czechs, Magyars, Croats, 
Serbs, Roumanians, Turks, Armenians, — the proud state of 
Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths of the 
Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtle peoples of the East. 
These peoples did not wish to be united. They ardently desired 
to direct their own affairs, would be satisfied only by undisputed 
independence. They could be kept quiet only by the presence 
or the constant threat of armed inen. They would live under a 
common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day of 
revolution. But_the German military statesmen had reckoned 
with all that, and were ready to deal with it in their own way. 

Amazing Plan in Execution. 

And they have actually carried the greater part of that amaz- 
ing plan into execution. Look how things stand. Austria is at 
their mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon 
the choice of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since 
the war began. Its people now desire peace, but cannot have it 
until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-called central powers 
are in fact but a single power. Servia is at its mercy, should its 
hands be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has consented to its 
will, and Roumania is overrun. The Turkish armies, which 
Germans trained, are serving Germany, certainly not themselves, 
and the guns of German warships, lying in the harbor at Con- 
stantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day that they haA'e 
no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. From Hamburg 
to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. 

German Eagerness for Peace. 

Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has 
been manifested from Berlin ever since the snare was set and 
sprung? Peace, peace, peace has been the talk of her foreign office 
for now a year and more; not peace upon her own initiative, but 
upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems her- 
self to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, 
but most of it has been private. . Through all sorts of channels 
it has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but never with the 
terms disclosed which the German government would be willing 
to accept. That government has other valuable pawns in its 
hands besides those I have mentioned. 

It still holds a valuable part of France, though with slowly 
relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies 
press close upon Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It 
cannot go further; it dare not go back. It wishes to close its 
bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the 
pound of flesh it will demand. 



Thinking of Power at Home. 

The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see 
very clearly to what point Fate has brought them. If they fall 
back or are forced back an inch, their power both abroad and at 
home will fall to pieces like a house of cards. It is their power 
at home they are thinking about now more than their power 
abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very 
feet; and deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one 
chance to perpetuate their military power or even their controlling 
political influence. If they can secure peace now with the immense 
advantages still in their hands which they have up to this 
point apparently gained, they will have justified themselves before 
the German people; they will have gained by force what they 
promised to gain by it; an immense expansion of German power, 
an immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial 
opportunities. Their prestige will be secure, and with their 
prestige their political power. If they fail, their people will thrust 
them aside; a government accovmtable to the people themselves 
will be set up in Germany as it has been in England, in the 
United States, in France, and in all the great countries of the 
modern time except Germany. If they succeed they are safe and 
Germany and the world are undone; if they fail Germany is saved 
and the world will be at peace. If they succeed, America will fall 
within the menace. We and all the rest of the world must remain 
armed, as they will remain and must make ready for the next step 
in their aggression; if thej' fail the world may unite for peace and 
Germany may be of the union. 

Sinister Intrigue for Peace. 

Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue for 
peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any 
agency that promises to effect their purpose, the deceit of the 
nations? Their present particular aim is to deceive all those who 
throughout the world stand for the rights of peoples and the self- 
government of nations; for they see what immense strength the 
forces of justice and of liberalism are gathering out of this war. 
They are employing liberals in their enterprise. Thej'- are using 
men, in Germany and without, as their spokesmen whoni they 
have hitherto despised and oppressed, using them for their own 
destruction, — socialists, the leaders of labor, the thinkers they 
have hitherto sought to silence. Let them once succeed and these 
men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight 
of the great military empire they will have set up; the revolu- 
tionists in Russia will be cut off from all succor or co-operation 
in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered and sup- 
ported; Germany herself will lose her chance of freedom; and all 
Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle. 

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted in this 
country than in Russia and in every country in Europe to which 
the agents and dupes of the imperial German government can get 
access. That government has manj^ spokesmen here, in places 
high and low. They have learned discretion. They keep within 
the law. It is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim 
the liberal purposes of their masters; declare this a foreign war 
which can touch America with no danger to either her lands or 
her institutions; set England at the center of the stage and talk 
of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout the 



nf .1; ^F- *° °,"' ^','^^^"* tradition of isolation in the politics 
of the nations; and seek to undermine the government with fa s? 
professions of loyalty to its principles. vcrnment witn tal^e 

People's War. 

But they will make no headway. The false betrav fhem<,eUe^ 
always m every accent. It is only friends rndpaJt'^sans of the 
?heT:iTT"''-''.'^}-T ^' '^^^^ ^I'-^^dy identified who utter 
* n M "i^ disguised disloyalties. The facts are patent to al the 

sTates where° w'"'' "'' '^7 "^^^ ^^^.'"'^ ^^^" t'^'" i" the Uni d 
states, where we are accustomed to deal with facts and not with 

l°'thLfthi.= f"' *^' ff^' '''' *^^^ ^*^"^^ °"t ab?ve all the s 
IS that this IS a people's war, a war for freedom and justice and 

^li"f 7vf """'I", 'T"f'' "^^ ^he nations of the world^ a war to 

mSe ft%r'^^ '^^fi ^°r *^" P"°P^" ^^° ^^^^ "P°" ^' ^"^ have 
th^^? JL own the German people themselves included; and 

Sr. Tu^'*' the choice to break through all these hypocrisies 
and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world 
free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age 
rnn^c'f-?. J ' ^^"^ ^^}S^\°^ ai-ms and the arbitrary choices of self- 
constituted masters by the nation which can maintain the biggest 
armies and the most irresistible armaments, -a power to which 
the wor d has afforded no parallel and in the face of which politi- 
cal Ireedon must wither and perish. 

Flag Shall Wear New Luster. 
'' For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be 
to tne man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this 
day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is 
to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nations 
We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall 
wear a new luster. Once more we shall make good with our lives 
and fortunes the great faith to which we were born and a new 
glory shall shine in the face of our people." 



AMERICA TO RUSSIA 



Address by Elihu Root, at Petrograd on 
June 15, 1917. 

Mr. President and Members of the Council of Ministers: 

The mission for which I have the honor to speak is charged by 
the government and people of the United States of America with 
a message to the government and people of Russia. The mission 
comes from a democratic republic. 

Its members are commissioned and instructed by a President 
who holds his high office as chief executive of more than 100,000,000 
free people by virtue of popular election, in which more than 
18,000,000 votes were freely cast and fairly counted pursuant to 
law, by universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage. 

For one hundred and forty years our people have been strug- 
gling with the hard problems of self-government. With many 
shortcomings, many mistakes, many imperfections, we still have 
maintained order and respect for law, individual freedom, and 
national independence. 

Under the security of our own laws we have grown in strength 
and prosperity. But we value our freedom more than wealth. 
We love liberty and we cherish above all our possessions the ideals 
for which our fathers fought and siiffered and sacrificed that 
America might be free. 

We believe in the competence of the power of democracy and 
in our heart of hearts abides faith in the coming of a better world 
in which the humble and oppressed of all lands may be lifted up by 
freedom to a heritage of justice and equal opportunity. 

Joy at Russia's Freedom. 

The news of Russia's new-found freedom brought to America 
universal satisfaction and joy. From all the land sympathy and 
hope went out to the new sister in the circle of democracies. And 
the mission is sent to express that feeling. 

The American democracy send to the democracy of Russia a 
greeting of sympathy, friendship, brotherhood, godspeed. 

Distant America knows little of the special conditions of 
Russian life which must give form to the government and laws 
which you are about to create. As we have developed our insti- 
tutions to serve the needs of our national character and life, so, 
we assume that you will develop your institutions to serve the 
needs of Russian character and life. 

As we look across the sea we distinguish no party, no class. 
We see great Russia as a whole, as one mightj^ striving, aspir- 
ing democracy. 

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II 

Common Danger to All. 

One fearful danger threatens the liberty of both nations. The 
armed forces of a military autocracy are at the gates of Russia 
and the allies. The triumph of German arms will mean the death 
of liberty in Russia. No enemy is at the gates of America, but 
America has come to realize that the triumph of German arms 
means the death of liberty in the world; that we who love liberty 
and would keep it must fight for it, and fight for it now when the 
free democracies of the world may be srong in union, and not 
delay until they may be beaten down separately in succession. 

So, America sends another message to Russia — that we are 
going to fight, and have already begun to fight, for your freedom 
equally with our own, and we ask you to fight for our freedom 
equally with yours. We would make your cause ours and our 
cause yours, and, with a common purpose and mutual helpfulness 
of a firm alliance, make sure of victory over our common foe. 

Quotes Word of Wilson. 

You will recognize your own sentiments and purposes in the 
words of President Wilson to the American congress when, on the 
2d of April last, he advised a declaration of war against Germany. 
He said then: 

" We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose be- 
cause we know that in such a government [the German 
government], following such methods, we can never have a 
friend, and that in the presence of its organized power, 
always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what pur- 
pose, there can be no assured security for the democratic' 
governments of the world. 

" We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this 
natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the 
whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions 
and its power. 

Seek Peace and Freedom. 

"We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of 
false pretense about them to fight thus for the ultimate peace 
of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German 
peoples included; for the rights of nations, great and small, 
and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of 
life and of obedience. 

" The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace 
must be planted upon the tested foundations of political 
liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for our- 
selveSj no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall 
freely make. We are one of the champions of the rights 
of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have 
been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations 
can make them." 

Wilson Praise to Russia. 

And you will see the feeling toward Russia with which America 
has entered the great war in another clause of the same address. 
President Wilson further declared: 

"■ Does not every American feel that assurance has been 

added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the 



12 

wonderful and heartening things that have been happening 
within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known bj^ 
those who knew her best to have been always in fact demo- 
cratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all 
the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their 
natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. 

" The autocracy that crowned the summit of her politi- 
cal structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the 
reality of its power, was not, in fact, Russian in origin, 
character, or purpose, and now it has lieen shaken off and 
the great generous Russian people have been added, in all 
their naive majesty and might, to the forces that are fight- 
ing for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. 
Here is a fit partner for a league of honor." 
" That partnership of honor in the great struggle for human 
freedom, the oldest of the great democracies now seeks in 
fraternal union with the youngest. Practical and specific methods 
and the possibilities of our allies' co-operation, the members of 
the mission would be glad to discuss with the members of the 
government of Russia." 



MESSAGE TO RUSSIAN PEOPLE 



By the American Rights League, Sent 
June 23, 1917 

The following Message to the Russian People from the 
American Rights League and signed in its behalf by Lyman 
Abbott, James M. Beck, Frederic R. Coudert, Thomas A. 
Edison, Charles B. Fairchild, Franklin H. Giddings„John Grier 
Hibben, Hamilton Holt, Charles Evans Hughes, George 
Kennan, Louis Marshall, Theodore Roosevelt, William Roscoe 
Thayer, William English Walling, George W. Wickersham, 
George Haven Putnam, president of the American Rights 
League ; Douglas Wilson Johnson, chairman of the Executive 
Committee, and William Emerson, secretary and treasurer, was 
sent June 23, 1917. The text of the message follows: 

"To the Great Russian People: 

" Citizens of the oldest and greatest democracy of the New 
World, we greet our brother citizens of the newest and greatest 
democracy of the Old World. Defenders of the principles of 
democracy in our wars of 1776, 1812, 1861 and 1898, we are proud 
to become your allies in the final struggle to make the world safe 
for democracy. 

" Three years ago you took up arms to defend your brothers 
of the south against brutal Teutonic aggression. Believing in the 
justice of your sacred cause, your gallant ally France took her 
place by your side with drawn sword. Great Britain followed, and 
today we have consecrated our lives, our fortunes and our sacred 
honor to the same cause of human liberty in which you so nobly 
assumed the leadership. 

■' With you, as with us, there has been one national ideal of 
honor and justice but a multiplicity of individual counsels. The 
freedom of speech and action which is essential to true democracy 
affords unlimited opportunity for the enemy without and the 
traitor within to raise their voices in efforts to mould public opin- 
ion and national policy to the detriment of the whole people. 
While your gallant soldiers were carrying the banners of liberty 
to the crest of the Carpathians, we were fighting an insidious 
German propaganda in our midst which sought to paralyze any 
national action in behalf of your righteous cause. America, like 
Russia, was flooded with German agents, who secretly employed 
as their tools honest and well meaning citizens in an effort to com- 
mit us to a German-made peace. 

German Peace Propaganda. 

" Impressed by their own unfortunate experience, the American 
people have viewed with deep anxiety a propaganda pushed by 

13 



14 

German agents, based on the appeal of certain Russian parties for 
a 'peace without annexation or indemnities.' Our anxiety is not 
based on any desire for conquest of enemy territory, nor on any 
determination to weaken and humiliate our opponents by punitive 
indemnities. No democracy engages in a war of conquest and 
plunder. But we recognize that the ambiguous slogan ' peace with- 
out annexation or indemnities ' is being exploited by the same 
subtle German peace propaganda from which for more than two 
years we have so grievously suffered. 

" Germany plans a great central European autocracy which 
shall cut the continent in two, stifle the growth of Russia by 
forever closing her only southern outlet to the seas, subjugate 
western Asia to the gates of India, and pave the way for a 
later war with world domination as the goal. To this end she 
has dominated Austrian policy in the Balkans, reduced Bulgaria 
and Turkey to vassalage, appeared ' in shining armor ' to protect 
Austria in the seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and secretly 
supported the conquest of Serbia. 

" Today, facing inevitable collapse if her enemies maintain 
their alliance against her, Germany believes she can still wrest 
victory from defeat providing she is able to detach Russia from 
her faithful allies by ofifers of peace without annexation or in- 
demnities. Failing this, she hopes through Russia to impose on 
the Allies a policy which would leave Germany in secure control 
of Bosnia, Herzegovina and other lands previously taken by force 
from her peaceful neighbors. With these earlier conquests guar- 
anteed to her by treaty, with her dominion over Austria-Hungary, 
Bulgaria and Turkey consolidated and extended, a new and more 
powerful Germany would emerge from the ruins of the war she 
wilfully provoked. Profiting by her conquests of supplies, machin- 
ery and treasures from invaded territories, sustained by the billions 
of illegal indemnities levied on captured cities, strong in her own 
practical freedom from the ravages of hostile armies, immeasur- 
ably strengthened in the eyes of the world by the military prestige 
and the moral victory which belong to those who conclude terms 
of peace on enemy territory, her foes weakened for a century to 
come through the systematic destruction effected by her invading 
armies, the new Germany would enter upon plans for future ag- 
grandizement with every prospect of ultimate success. Little 
wonder that this kind of a ' peace without annexation or indemni- 
ties ' sounds sweet to German ears. 

Question of Annexation. 

" Such is the peace which German agents in every land are 
secretly supporting. Such is the peace which would forge anew 
on Russia the chains just broken by your glorious revolution. Such 
is the peace we are united in the fraternity of democracy to pre- 
vent. 

" To those in both our lands who speak of peace without an- 
nexation or indemnities, let us frankly say: 'If you mean by this 
a peace which shall not permit seizure of the homes and fields of 
our enemies, we are at one with you. H you oppose the forcible 
conquest of alien lands and the violent enslavement of alien 
peoples, our opposition is no less strong than yours. If you desire 
no wrongful indemnities imposed for the express purpose of im- 
poverishing the countries which provoked this war, then our de- 
sires are equally the same. If this be what you mean by peace 
without annexation or indemnities, then would we welcome such 
a peace.' 



15 

"But if by no annexation you mean that the Teutonic robbers 
should not hand back the sacred soil of Russia and Serbia, forcibly 
torn from Slavic hands today, or that they should not restore the 
territory of Russia s brother Slavs in Bosnia and Herzegovina 
wrested from them with equal ruthlessness but yesterday; if you' 
mean that they need not surrender the blood soaked fields of 
innocent Belgium and the devastated lands of Northern France 
conquered by autocratic militarism today, nor restore to its right- 
ful allegiance the fair province of Alsace-Lorraine, enslaved by 
that same militarism but yesterday; if you mean that stricken Ar- 
menia, rescued by Russian armies from Turkish tyranny, should 
be abandoned to renewed massacre and pillage at the hands of the 
lurks and Kurds; if by no indemnities you mean that just repara- 
tion for actual damage done in the invaded territories shall not 
be niade by those who wrought the awful havoc, that heroic 
Belgium shall be abandoned to helpless contemplation of her 
ruined country with no hope of rehabilitation, that the gallant 
i< ranee, who hurried to Russia's side in the unequal battle must 
out of her poverty repay the millions stolen from her people for 
the enrichment of Germany or wantonly destroyed for the purpose 
of weakening the future development of France; if you mean that 
upon the innocent victim shall fall the burden of restoring ravished 
lands, while the guilty aggressor is left to the profitable enjoyment 
ot the fruits of his robberies, then do we say to you, * The people 
of free democracies know how to die, but they do not know how 
to make an unjust, dishonorable peace.' 

,^ Victoiy Is In Sight. 

lour magnificent armies have demonstrated that when prop- 
erly supphed with munitions of war they are superior to the forces 
of autocratic militarism. They will yet drive the invader from 
your soil and write glorious deeds on the pages of Russian history 
boon we will join you — a million, two million or more as the 
need may be. We fight with you to make the world safe for 
democracy. The victory is in sight. Let us not stain the fair 
record of democracy's great achievement by sacrificing the just 
claims of those dependent upon us. Our common goal is the 
triumph of justice, the freedom of mankind and full liberty of life 
to the smallest nation. The voice of your brothers in the south 
the voice of our brothers in Belgium and France, remind us that 
there is no justice without due reparation for the wrongs they 
have suffered; that there is no freedom of mankind if they remain 
enslaved; that there is no liberty of life until the Prussian autoc- 
racy which oppresses them has been destroyed. Let us show 
the world that democracy is both honorable and powerful; that it 
will shed no man's blood in a war of aggression, but that it will 
spend Its own blood in a war in defence of those who are wronged 
and oppressed." 



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